Raijintek Triton CPU Cooler Review

We’ve seen some pretty good CPU Coolers here at pcG from Raijintek, a new company that’s now in it’s third year, our very own Test Rig utilities the impressive Themis cooler even. But I guess the natural evolution for Raijintek was to branch out further and look at water cooling, well this they have done with the launch of the Raijintek Triton. But the Triton is no ordinary All in One (AIO) CPU Cooler; yes it has a regular 240mm radiator, utilizing a couple of 120mm fans and a CPU based pump circulating the liquid around the loop, but! The entire system can be disassembled allowing you to add to the loop, and rather cleverly (and thanks to its fill port) Raijintek have included a few dyes (Red, Green & Blue) so you can modify the colour of the clear liquid to the colour of your choice. Of course all of this would be a waste of time if the tubing was black rubber, but no Raijintek have chosen to use clear tubing so you can show the colour off. Ohh and even the pump/CPU block illuminates, sounds good eh, well let’s take a closer look…

‘TRITON, RAIJINTEK’s first Liquid Cooling System in the well known All-In-One design, designed in Germany and made in Taiwan. With several years of experience in Liquid cooling products and the cooperation with German Engineers, RAIJINTEK’s RD team developed the concepts of most performing DIY liquid cooling components and spent years to design one of the best performing and expandable All-In-One Liquid CPU cooler for enthusiasts. TRITON’s copper water block is a new concept design of micro channels, extra large contact fin area with 2 flow channels for the best direct flow of liquid. More than this, TRITON’s Pump, also new and exclusive, designed for high Q-Max, low dBA, and contains a reliable Bearing type.’

The Raijintek Triton arrived at pcG in rather tattered looking, unusual box (for a AIO) with a handle at the top. The colours all seemed rather faded and the box overall looked somewhat lackluster. The front of the box (which is the same as the back) features an image of the Triton on the left, allowing you to see the pump, the clear tubing, the radiator and the included 120mm fans. On the right there’s a load of blurb about the cooler (see Specifications/Features below) as well as a list of supported Sockets (INTEL: LGA 775/115x/1366/201x CPU (Core™ i3 / i5 / i7 CPU) & (AMD: FM2+/FM2/FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2). The image above right actually shows the underside of the box, here you can see all of the different versions of the Triton (from left to right), the Core, RGB (the version we have here), Green, Red and Blue.

On opening the box, that already looked worse for wear I was shocked at the packaging. It is the worst that I have ever seen (I think!), as you can see from the images the actual packaging consisted of a single piece of bent cardboard and a handful of standard packing bubbles!? First impressions at this point are not very good and Raijintek need to improve upon this.

But despite the poor packaging the contents seemed to all be in order, that was until I spotted the dent in the side of the radiator end-tank! 🙁

Other than the main AIO Cooler the box contents can be seen above and are listed below.

Box Contents

x2 120mm Fans

Installation Guide

Back plate

Bracket

Colour Coolant x3 (Red, Green & Blue)

Assorted Intel AMD screws/washers

Thermal Grease

At the time of review the Raijintek Triton is retailing for approximately £70 at Overclockers UK and comes with a 2 year warranty.

First Impressions

After the initial on-boxing I wasn’t expecting too much from the Triton Cooler itself, but to be fair it’s ok. It might not be up to the standard set by the likes of Corsair (H105), but it’s probably going to be good enough and again to be fair no other AIO offers this level of customization. Strangely enough I already feel that I rather like it, maybe it’s that underdog kind of feeling, anyway let’s take a closer look shall we…

Taking a closer look at the aluminium radiator we find that it’s 275mm (W) × 120mm (D) × 32mm (H), meaning that for a radiator for a AIO CPU Cooler one could deem it as average in size. Obviously the design and the screw holes are there to support two 120mm fans. The right side (where the tubing connects) features a larger end-tank than the left, while the fins themselves are quite tightly packed.

The fittings are regular 1/4″ fittings which is nice to see and the clear tubing has a O/D of 12.5mm with an I/D of 9.5mm. Therefore the tubing wall is quite thin meaning that the tubes that are rather long, have a tendency to kink easily.

As you can see as discovered in the un-boxing the small end tank has a rather nasty dent, I don’t think this was done during shipping though, despite the rather poor packaging. Quality control could obviously do with some improvement…

The pump assembly (comprising of CPU block, pump and tank/reservoir) is at the heart of the Triton AIO CPU Cooler. It features a cooper water-block, with a pump rated at 120 L/Hour, with a noise rating of 20dBA and a Life Expectancy of 50,000 hrs. The pump is rated at 12v and should be run at 12v for maximum efficiency. The cold-plate itself is secured to the base of the pump by way of eight screws. Don’t forget to take the label off before fitting… 😉

The top of the pump features a silver Raijintek name and logo, as well as featuring the fill port. Trailing away from the pump we have its braided power cable, that should either be connected to a 3/4-pin fan header on the motherboard or a 12v source, via the Molex power adapters provided. Please note there’s no support for any form of PWM control, which is a bit of a shame!

Looking at the side of the pump housing we can see the pump within and just about make out the LED (x2 white) at the top. I must admit to not really liking the concept of using just two screws to hold the pump assembly to the CPU and would have liked to have seen a sturdier four screw system.

There’s a lot to like about the Raijintek Triton, yes there’s some packaging and quality control issues, but what’s here is good. The ability to see your coolant for the first time in an AIO is long overdue and I wonder why it’s taken so long to get here and why another (long established) manufacturer hasn’t done it before Raijintek!? But they have done it and on face value alone, and with the ability to add your own dyes, the Triton’s actually off to a damn fine start…

As you can see from the image above left Raijintek supply three basic coloured dyes (Red, Green & Blue), although I wont be using them in testing.

Above right shows the parts needed for our Socket LGA 1150 install aboard our ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer motherboard. This consists of a foam backed back plate, that will utilize the four longs silver screws, four plastic washers and the four stand-offs. Then we have the metal bracket that will be secured to the stand-offs by the four smaller screws. The eight long black screws are for fitting the fans to the radiator. The instructions were relatively clear, but could still do with some improvement.

The back plate is simply placed beneath the motherboard with the foam side touching the board and the four long silver screws thread through from the back to the front. The four white plastic washers are then placed atop the screws and held in place by the four stand-offs. Not that the silver stand-off fit flat side down against the washer (see image above left).

Next the top bracket can be mounted and secured by the four smaller silver screws. That’s the CPU bracket complete, easy eh! The only thing I would say is that it’s difficult to hold the back plate, screws, washers and stand-offs all at the same time, plenty of other manufacturers have this assembly as single piece unit.

The two 120mm fans were screwed to the front of our HAF XB test case, by threading the supplied screws (x8 black) through the fan, through the chassis and into the radiator on the other side.

The optional fan speed controller was not used as for our testing we run all fans at 100% anyway (this ensures a level playing field). Instead the fans were connected directly to one of the motherboard’s fan headers. What’s odd here though is some of the wiring options/design choices as there’s no PWM control for the fans and both fans are tethered together via a single cable!?

The final task was to secure the pump assembly to the top of the CPU via the two captive screws attached to the assembly. This was done after adding a small pea sized drop of thermal paste, we use (Arctic MX-4). The screws were then carefully tightened in turn to ensure the cold-plate was brought down level against the CPU lid. This is very important, you should never tighten one screw before the other… 😉

As you can see the end result looks good, even without the use of colored dyes, also note the excess of tubing, this is only highlighted here due to the close proximity of the pump to the radiator, not something you’d see in a regular tower case.

Testing Methodology/Setup

For CPU Cooler testing, we here at pcGameware run Prime95 for a 15 minute period. During this period the temperature is monitored with CoreTemp and the cooling performance recorded (the max recorded is the average for all cores). Between each stress test we allow a 15 minute cool-down to allow for more accurate results. To adjust the fan speed we simply use the UEFI. A close eye is also kept on the ambient temperature, with the maximum being recorded for each run, this allows us to calculate the Delta temperature (Core – Ambient = Delta). Each run was performed with the Intel Core i5-4690K CPU at the following frequencies: 3.5GHz (Stock) and 4.0GHz (using the ASROCK OC Tweaker, shown in the picture below), all results have been recorded with CPU-Z.

* Please note: To ascertain the maximum and minimum noise levels produced by our CPU test coolers. The dB is recorded at a distance of 1 metre from the cooler, with all case fans unplugged to isolate the sound in question.

Processor speed is set using the OC Tweaker tab of the UEFI, “Disabled” for stock speeds (3.5GHz) and “Turbo 4.0GHz” for the minor overclock tests. It should be noted that changing the OC settings resets the Fan Speeds, so these are checked on the next reboot and reset to “Full Speed” (see below).

All the fans installed in the system are set to 100% speed using the displayed settings, this is simple with the ASROCK UEFI with the option of “Full Speed” being available for all system fans.

CPU-Z – Raijintek Triton – 3.5GHz (fans @ 100%)

CPU-Z – Raijintek Triton – 4.0GHz (fans @ 100%)

Hardware Performance

As stated above, to make our performance tests easier to follow and to get the most accurate recordings, all of the following tests have been carried out with case fans set at 100% and the Raijintek Triton fans also set at 100%.

The Raijintek Triton put in an impressive showing in the stock 3.5GHz (boosting @ 3.7GHz) test with a average maximum Core temperature of 44.25 degrees and an associated Delta of 20.25 degrees. That’s just 0.75 degrees (that’s within the margin of error) behind the Deepcool Gamer Storm Maelstrom 240. So the Triton’s off to a great start then…

With a little more voltage on the CPU (1.155v) and a higher frequency 4.0GHz things start to warm up a little, but the Triton’s still not really breaking a sweat! With a average Core temperature of 51.25 degrees the thermal performance of the Triton equals the best cooler we have ever tested (ignoring the massive 280mm Kraken X61), which is the Fractal Design Kelvin T12. Only the fact that the Triton’s producing more noise, keeps it from charting above the Fractal Design Kelvin T12. But it’s impressive stuff for sure and an impressive debut in the world of AIOs for Raijintek.

Acoustics

As one would expect two 120mm 2600 RPM fans running at 100% make a fair bit of noise. But to be fair we have heard more noise from other coolers, suggesting that Raijintek have a good fan under their belt also. If need be the fans can be controlled by the supplied fan control cable allowing that all important balance between thermal performance and acoustic performance. Although to be fair I would have liked to have seen some PWM fan control.

Final Thoughts

They do say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and that’s certainly true when it comes to the Raijintek Triton. The poor packaging and odd design choices at first clouded my judgement. But the fact is that this is one desirable All in One…

The Raijintek Triton came to pcG in a somewhat muted box that already looked liked it had a hard life. Opening the box only made things worse, as the packaging is one of the worst I’ve seen, with the components just protected by a length of cardboard and standard packing bubbles. After un-boxing things didn’t improve much as I also noted that there was a dent in the side of the radiator. All in all Raijintek need to spend some time looking at their packaging and overall quality control.

Luckily once out of the box and on closer inspection things did improve. The Triton is a good looking AIO thanks mainly to its clear tubing and clear tank allowing the user to see a little of whats going on. It’s always nice to be able to see the liquid actually pumping around your loop, why other manufacturers haven’t done this before I don’t know, but well done Raijintek! The ability to also add a dye (Red, Green & Blue) allowing you to customize the colour the liquid is another great boon for this AIO cooler.

It seems well made too (apart from the dent that is), early internet reports suggested otherwise, but from my findings I found the build quality to be very good, although the design doesn’t have the flair of say a Corsair or a Silverstone AIO. Of course one of the attractions of the Triton is the fact that it’s designed to be modified; un-screw one of those 1/4″ fittings and just start adding to the loop. Then refill via the handy fill port in the top of the pump assembly, very few manufacturers offer that!

So we know it looks pretty good, and we can watch our chosen coloured liquid traverse around the loop, but what’s it like to fit and how well does it perform?

Good news is that the Raijintek Triton is very easy to fit and install, yes there’s probably a few too many parts, but they go together with the minimum of fuss and final fitment of the pump assembly utilities just a couple of screws (although I must admit I would have liked to have seen four!). It’s at this point the odd design choices come into play, like why are the two fans linked (permanently) on a very short wire, where’s the PWM control that we have come to expect and what’s this strange little rotary switch at the end of a wire for!? None of this is bad, but it just suggests that the Triton may have been rushed in the final stages…

Performance is nothing short of excellent, the combination of its 240mm radiator, the x2 2600 RPM fans along with that powerful pump sees the Raijintek take on all comers. With an average 54 degree maximum core temperature in our overclocked 4.0GHz test, the Delta of 20 degrees equals the best we have ever seen in the sub 240mm radiator category. Of course there’s the related fan noise; with the fans set at 100% the Triton’s fans emit a loud 46dBA, but to be fair we’ve heard worse! And of course the fan speed can be controlled allowing you to balance the cooling/noise equation.

Overall I’d have to say that Raijintek really seem to have a winner on their hands with the Triton; it’s expandable, it’s well made, it looks good (thanks to that clear tubing), it’s simple to install and performs extremely well. All Raijintek need to do, is look at their packaging and improve their quality control, but at £70 maybe I shouldn’t really complain too much… 😉